Animated Thoughts: ART 384 - Animation History

Flipbooks used in class

Well, my animation history class is winding down for the semester. It's been a roller-coaster as we moved from in-person classes to online learning due to the lockdown. But regardless of the modality, one thing that I like about teaching is that I invariably end up learning more about my subject than I did before. For example: I openly admit that my knowledge of flicker films was pretty weak. But this was one of those interesting facets of animation that I just had to dig into a little bit deeper as I wrote my lectures and explored new films to show my class.

1948 DeJUR 8 mm movie camera
from my private collection

Another one was the refreshing experience of reading about films that Maureen included in her book--films which I had seen at festivals or discovered on my own.

 But I have to say that the most fulfilling experience that I had while teaching was showing clips from the 1981 Heavy Metal movie (the B-17 sequence in particular) and having a student come up to me after class, telling me how amazed he was at what I had shown him that day, and that he was going to track down and watch Heavy Metal that weekend. There's just something special about inspiring someone to learn about a new facet of animation on their own.

I'd give this experience an 'A'.

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